Cooper's descriptions are the school at
which all literary landscapists should study: all the secrets of art
are there. But Cooper is inferior to Walter Scott in his comic and
minor characters, and in the construction of his plots. One is the
historian of nature, the other of humanity." The article winds up with
further praise of Scott, whom its author evidently regarded as his
master.
The part played by these models in Balzac's literary training was to
afford him a clearer perception of the essential worth of the Romantic
movement. Together with its extravagancies and lyricism, Romantic
literature deliberately put into practice some important principles
which certain forerunners of the eighteenth century had already
unconsciously illustrated or timidly taught. It imposed Diderot's
doctrine that there was beauty in all natural character. And its chief
apostle, Hugo, with the examples of Ariosto, Cervantes, Rabelais and
Shakespeare to back him, proved that what was in nature was or should
be also in art, yet without, for that, seeking to free art from law
and the necessity for choice.
This spectacle of a vaster field to exploit, this possibility of
artistically representing the common, familiar things of the world in
their real significance, seized on the youthful mind of him who was to
create the _Comedie Humaine_.
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